No Country for Women - Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 40 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

EVENTS

Ordinary Iranian women created a Facebook page called stealthy freedom or secret freedom.

Islamic Revolution started 35 years ago. Since then it has been illegal for a woman to leave the house without wearing a hijab or headscarf. The punishment is a fine or imprisonment.
An Iranian woman said, “My hair was like a hostage to the government.” It is so true.

“My problem is not having to wear the headscarf. My problem is not having a choice,” writes another Iranian woman on the Facebook page.

I say bravo girls, you go girls! You take off your hijab forever, not for a few seconds. Not secretly, but openly. But would they be able to do it? So many girls and women are executed in Iran for not practicing Islam properly.

I feel so sad. Women, only because they are women, they are not allowed to enjoy the rights and freedom they deserve. Women have to take off their hijabs only for a few seconds to know what freedom feels like. Human species sucks. It has not yet made its women free from the cage it has made for women. I am ashamed of human species.

The women’s wing of the party has already held demonstrations in several cities demanding that the wearing of Hijab be made a part of the constitution and compulsory in Pakistan, and tomorrow the party will observe ‘Hijab Day’.

“Our society has been invaded by western values and women who wear the Hijab or Burqa are targeted as extremists and that is totally unfair,” said Durdana Siddiqui, the Deputy General Secretary of the party’s women wing.

We want to send a clear message to the anti-Hijab elements by observing this day that Hijab is not only part of our religious obligation but also a fundamental right and protective shield for women,” she said.

The JI plans to distribute free head scarfs to working women in the markets and offices besides setting up stalls to sell Hijabs on subsidized rates and will also hold protests in different cities with the biggest one planned in Karachi.